We quickly moved into our hostel--this time kind of a long house, again with all 6 girls in one room, and very oddly placed door knobs (chest height is just impractical), and boarded the bus to take a boat ride to another part of the lake. After being herded into smaller groups, our Quebecois guide, Sasha, gave us a short briefing (redundant, I know, but I've had really long briefings before, excruciatingly long) and to the cave we went--twisting, bending, crouching, and slipping. It was long the stuff of Maori legend, but in the late '40's I think, some guy noticed the water moving oddly, investigated, and rediscovered it. It has since been altered just so that one does not have to enter from below the water, and to put a tourist path in. After getting in, we were given some standard cave spiel--on the same line as Cave of the Mounds. There was a pretty spectacular waterfall inside that was explained, and then we reached the landing for the boat.
In order to see the glowworms, we had to board a small boat and be pulled along by our guide. Innumerable worms dotted the roof of the cave, much like stars seeming to extend forever into the cave. It lead me to want to make some comment on the longetivity (or lake thereof) of humans/humankind, but I'm just not that poetic. It was highly impressive.
Afterwards, we were subject to a couple of presentations explaning glowworms and offering some natural history of the area. What struck me was the discussion of Takeha. Takeha are a bird, a grass eating bird, kind of like a chicken, that were thought of as being fairly extinct until a population was discovered in the area. Longstory short, the area is now heavily protected and access is very restricted. But, Sasha told us, there were some resident Takeha (among other cool birds) at a wildlife center just down the road. Yay!
As we went to board the boat to leave, a helicopter flew over with what, after careful closeup inspection using the tourist camera, appeared to be dead elk, or big red deer, dangling below. Our bus driver told us that they were being flown into town for the restaraunts. It still surprises me when I see game on the menu--I love it.
After a dinner that, sadly, did not consist of fresh elk, some of us set off to race the darkness and find a takeh
a. It wasn't as difficult as we thought and was a lovely tramp near the lake. We were delighted...well...I was delighted, the others were pretty indifferent, to find New Zealand Pigeons, Kakapos, Kea, and sundry other rare-ish NZ birds, and a takeha pen. We very nearly didn't see a takeha in the pen, but Michael managed to creep about quietly enough and call me over just in time to see one wander into a big ol' tussock clump. It was pretty cool. We stuck around to see a gorgeous sunset, and headed home. Lauren and I stumbled across one of nature's poptarts--a young rabbit, bringing my total New Zealand rabbit count up to 17.
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a. It wasn't as difficult as we thought and was a lovely tramp near the lake. We were delighted...well...I was delighted, the others were pretty indifferent, to find New Zealand Pigeons, Kakapos, Kea, and sundry other rare-ish NZ birds, and a takeha pen. We very nearly didn't see a takeha in the pen, but Michael managed to creep about quietly enough and call me over just in time to see one wander into a big ol' tussock clump. It was pretty cool. We stuck around to see a gorgeous sunset, and headed home. Lauren and I stumbled across one of nature's poptarts--a young rabbit, bringing my total New Zealand rabbit count up to 17.. 
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